Friday Philosophy – When the Job Meets Real Life August 15, 2009

For my Friday Philosophy this week, I’m going way off topic. I’m straying into non-work life. Actually, let’s be accurate, I’m wading deep into personal life. If you want to know about Oracle mechanics, this ain’t the post for you.

It’s been a trying week this week, so much so that I have not posted for a few days – and I suspect I won’t post at all next week. About two hours after completing my last post on Tuesday, my wife called me to let me know my mum had been taken into hospital. My mother had developed some breathing difficulties, in that she’d forgotten completely how to do it.

So, after tube/train/drive across the country I found myself sat in an intensive care unit with my Brother, wondering how in heck so many tubes can be attached to such a small person as my mother, but they managed it. All of this medical monitoring stuff is attached to computers, many with readouts.

I have a couple of advantages over most people in these situations. I studied biology at University and I worked either within or along side the NHS for 7 or 8 years, on hospital patient systems. So I understand a bit about all the equipment that is used and the data it produces.

What has this to do with the world of Oracle Performance? Not an awful lot. Except for one thing.

Sometimes, though I love what I do for a living and find solving performance problems stimulating and satisfying, I question “what is the point” in the whole real-world situation. I was sat there at the side of my mother’s bed, exchanging idle chat and some black humour with my brother {it’s the way our brains are wired, I blame my Mum}. Suddenly I stopped listening to my brother. The pattern had changed. The graphs had shifted and the figures had altered on the screens attached to the equipment monitoring my mother. I’d picked this up as I was used to watching performance graphs for computer systems. My brother was oblivious. Well what a surprise, an IT skill that turns out to be useful in the real world. Spotting graph/pattern changes.

As it turns out, the nursing staff had spotted these anomolous graphs too, glanced over, and realised it was just “one of those things”. Status quo was restored about 1 minute and 3 pints of my sweat later.

So why do I think my ability to spot a change in “performance graphs” and scare myself so deeply is a good thing? Because at least I had a feel for what was going on and I felt less clueless and helpless.

I’ve looke back on this and come to an even more shocking thought. There is a management technique that helps in real life. I have been a manager and I was surrounded by experts in their field. I was sat in a real-world situation, surrounded by experts in their field. When they did not react to the changed pattern on my mother’s monitors, I was reassured that it was not serious. So maybe some management skills have other uses too. I’ll remember that the next time someone tells me all management skills are bunkum. {But it probably still holds that most Managers are Bunkum :-) }

I wish that more IT managers could treat their staff this way. If the DBA team
{or Sys admin team, or network team} do not respond to the graphs as a sign of impending doom, then it probably ain’t impending doom, so trust them.

And of course the other reason I’ve blogged about this is it’s an outlet to a certain amount of trepidation about the future. Maybe I should have stuck to Biology rather than IT. *sigh*.